Logistics & Operations Research

The logistics research track is involved in the design and optimisation of inbound and outbound logistics processes for shippers and service providers in the logistics industry, both in for-profit and not-for-profit environments. In particular, the logistics section wants to focus on academically challenging and practically relevant issues in distribution logistics. Strategic aspects in the design of (distribution) networks as well as tactical problems in supply chain coordination and operational issues in inventory and routing optimization meet this double standard. Although there is a growing tendency for exploring more integrated distribution problems within the research community and staff members have explored combined production – distribution and location-distribution problems in the past, the research group does not want to venture into the specific fields of production or location modelling as there are other research groups within the Netherlands who have a stronger track record in this respect.

The logistics section is convinced that by combining empirical research with state-of-the-art optimization and simulation based research, it will be able to acquire a leading position in distribution logistics within the Netherlands and within the next 5 years become a key player within Europe.

Operations Research is the research field of designing and applying mathematical methods for better decision making. Traditionally, logistics has been the main application area, but modern operations research covers virtually any application domain, like finance, health care, communication technology, electronic commerce, and bioinformatics. The prominent common denominator of all these applications is optimisation. The design and analysis of algorithms for optimisation in its enormous variety is the main research topic in operations research. Efficiency of such solution methods has become more important since problems arising in the new application areas are huge: communication technology (internet) and e-commerce involve millions of potential participants, dna-strings in bioinformatics include millions of nucleotides. There is theoretical evidence that creating much faster computers will not add to our capacity in solving significantly larger problem instances. Analysing the structure of the problems by using and developing mathematical tools, in close collaboration with mathematicians and computer scientists, is the only alternative to arrive at reliable and robust methods to tackle the optimisation problems posed by society.